Make Him Burn

Time to go back to the 1600s for another reported case of vampirism!  This time our story takes place in Silesia, which is a historical region of central Europe, now known as Poland, Czech Republic and Germany. But on to the vampires!

In Silesia lived a man named Cuntius who was a well-loved member of the city council and highly respected. One day when Cuntius was around the age of 60, he was kicked in a sensitive spot by one of his horses. While he didn’t show any sign of serious injury, a few days later Cuntius fell deathly ill and claimed that because of his many sins, he would never be pardoned by God. As he lay dying a black cat jump onto his body and attacked him.

At Cuntius’ funeral a massive rain storm came out of nowhere and didn’t stop until his body had been placed inside the earth. Shortly after his burial rumors, stories and sightings of Cuntius spread like fire throughout the town. It was decided that they would exhume his body to see if there was anything strange.

Even though the bodies around Cuntius’ were all old and decayed, his remained perfectly preserved. This of course led the townsfolk to believe that he had become a vampire and therefore needed to be destroyed. They lifted his body out of the grave so that they could burn it, and found that it was unnaturally heavy. With great difficulty they placed his corpse into the fire. But, the flames didn’t burn him at all. The panicked executioner then chopped Cuntius’ body into tiny bits, he then threw each piece back into fire and this time they burned. After the cremation was finished they threw the remaining ashes into the river and that was the end of Cuntius the vampire.

This story was published by Henry More in 1653 in An Antidote Against Atheism. It is possible More made the story of Cuntius up to scare people into being moral for fear of becoming the undead. This was quite common back in the day; they often used the belief of supernatural evils to scare people into behaving. Tsk tsk.

- Moonlight